Doressoundiram, A., Roques, F., Boissel, Y. et al. (4 more authors) (2013) Ground-based exploration of the outer Solar system by serendipitous stellar occultations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 428. pp. 2661-2667. ISSN 0035-8711
Abstract
Serendipitous stellar occultation technique provides a powerful and unique tool to probe the outer Solar system matter, e.g. Kuiper disc and Oort cloud. We present the results of a serendipitous occultation observation campaign carried out with ULTRACAM, mounted on the ESO-VLT telescope, during 2005 May 17–20. The data are processed using the variability index (VI) method modified. The two-colour data set and the VI method allow searching for occulting objects in term of their distance (50, 200 and 5000 au). The analysis of ∼34 star-hours provide a working data set for assessing an instrumental approach to search for occultation events by trans-Neptunian objects. We performed recovery tests by implanting synthetic profiles in the data and defining the size of detectable objects to achieve a detection rate of 100 per cent. We propose a Fast Multi-Object Photometer (F-MOP) mounted on a 8-m class telescope and examine its performances. Such instrumental approach from the ground is able to exploit the occultation method for the exploration of the trans-Neptunian region, with a high efficiency.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2012 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. |
Keywords: | Kuiper belt: general |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 02 Nov 2017 14:44 |
Last Modified: | 02 Nov 2017 14:45 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sts230 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/mnras/sts230 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:123339 |